Combat aircraft

Above:

A recent focus on

maintaining the

Harriers has led

to an increase in

availability and

flight hours.

Jamie Hunter

Left: Despite

the addition

of the AIM-120

AMRAAM and

what is effectively

an air defense

detachment in

Bahrain, close air

support remains

the bread and

butter for the

Harrier force.

Jamie Hunter

For the past few years our deployment

rates were unsustainable. That’s the

Marine Corps, right? We get it done. But things

are getting better. What’s helped us a lot is

that the F-35 has deployed to MCAS Iwakuni in

Japan — that’s really taken two deployments off

the table

Lt Col Brett McGregor

to fix them all, so we need to get the

inventory to a more manageable number

and give ourselves the opportunity to

fix airplanes.’ According to Bucklew,

the number of engineers needs to be

matched with the number of aircraft.

While the maintenance burden

is still a genuine concern, Bucklew

acknowledges that availability and flight

hours for the pilots has improved. ‘We

typically fly six to eight sorties per day

on the squadron,’ he says. ‘Generally,

the new guys get around 15 hours per

month with the old guys trending at

around 12-13 hours. Two years ago

that figure was way lower. The product

that we are getting from the training

squadron at Cherry Point is excellent

and they arrive here with about 100

hours of Harrier time. Within six months

we can spin them up to be a combat-

ready wingman, and the main objective

for us is to get them to be a section lead

and a baseline instructor. It takes around

nine months to groom them as section

leaders — they need to have 200 hours

before they even start that process.’

Latest standard

Today’s new Harrier pilots fly an aircraft

that resembles the early AV-8As in

name only. A series of rolling updates

have brought the Harrier II bang up to

date for the modern era. The Litening

targeting pod was probably the

singularly most important addition to

its mission arsenal. The H5.0 software

upgrade enabled Litening to be carried

on the centerline in addition to the

initial inner wing station carriage.

Bringing the pod to the centerline

(even with the 25mm gun installed)

freed up the wings for drop tanks or

weapons. VMA-214’s Harriers are now

at H6.1 standard, which was fielded in

2015 and added full integration of the

Gen4 Litening plus associated software

corrections to address shortfalls in

smart weapon employment and

targeting. Variable message format

(VMF) terminals refined the Harrier’s

digital-aided close air support (DACAS)

technology, while the BRU-70/A

digital improved triple ejector rack

(Digital ITER) enabled expanded smart

weapons carriage.

When Combat Aircraft visited the

squadron, VMA-214 was working with

test units VX-9 ‘Vampires’ and VX-31

‘Dust Devils’ on H6.2 and its associated

Link-16 with new radios to enable the

http://www.combataircraft.net // February 2018 31

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